I don’t watch football for the violence

If you asked reporters why they were there, they would give some mumbo-jumbo reason that as hard as it may be, it was important to get reaction from the family in a case as sad and stunning as this one. Seau had been an absolute force during the prime of his playing days with the San Diego Chargers, ferocious, relentless, maniacal, beyond intense. Now that he was dead, it would be easy to say he was a joy to watch. But he wasn’t a joy to watch. He was scary to watch, just like the National Football League is scary to watch, which is one of the primary reasons we love to watch it, a human car crash on every play.

I have to disagree with this. I don’t like football because it’s violent, and I imagine the vast majority of football fans feel the same way. Sure, it’s nice to see a really solid, well-executed hit from time to time, but it’s not why I watch the game, and it probably wouldn’t even make a list of the top ten reasons why I like football.

If I really liked violence over all of football’s other positive attributes, I wouldn’t be watching football at all. There are many sports that are far more violent: boxing for example, K-1 and other MMA sports, even NASCAR or pro wrestling if two-by-fours, barbed wire, or Pabst Blue Ribbon are involved. In fact, if I really got a rise out of violence qua violence, I probably wouldn’t even watch sports at all. Instead I’d be watching Spartacus: Vengeance or Scarface or the evening news – unquestionably the most violent program on television.

Accordingly, I don’t think there is anything controversial about the research coming out from everywhere showing that concussions lead to early dementia, and I don’t think there is any sane conclusion other than that the NFL could be doing a lot more to protect the safety of its players. There are concerns that limiting violent contact in the NFL will destroy the sport, but again, I just don’t think those concerns are legitimate, because I don’t watch football for the concussions and don’t know anyone else who does.

…

So why do I like football then? Probably it has something to do with understanding the game and appreciating skill and strategy, but it can’t be just that or else I’d enjoy watching golf or chess on television as well, which I do not. Playing golf may be one of my favorite activities in the entire world, but I cannot stand watching golf on television.

…picture this: I take a seat in a bar or restaurant and suddenly leap to my feet, face contorted with delight or woe, yelling and gesticulating and looking as if I am fighting bees. I would expect the maitre d’ to say a quietening word at the least, mentioning the presence of other people. But then all I need do is utter some dumb incantation—”Steelers,” say, or even “Cubs,” for crumb’s sake—and everybody decides I am a special case who deserves to be treated in a soothing manner. Or else given a wide berth: ever been caught up in a fight over a match that you didn’t even know was being played? Or seen the pathetic faces of men, and even some women, trying to keep up with the pack by professing devoted loyalty to some other pack on the screen? If you want a decent sports metaphor that applies as well to the herd of fans as it does to the players, try picking one from the most recent scandal. All those concerned look—and talk—as if they were suffering from a concussion.

Wait! Have you ever had a discussion about higher education that wasn’t polluted with babble about the college team and the amazingly lavish on-campus facilities for the cult of athletic warfare? Noticed how the sign of a bad high school getting toward its Columbine moment is that the jocks are in the saddle? Worried when retired generals appear on the screen and talk stupidly about “touchdowns” in Afghanistan? By a sort of Gresham’s law, the emphasis on sports has a steadily reducing effect on the lowest common denominator, in its own field and in every other one that allows itself to be infected by it.

Since I like sports, I can’t really agree with Hitchens here, although I think his idea of sport as template for deep-set tribalism is spot-on. The real reason I like football is that it’s in my nature to like football: team sports are playing at war – they require physical prowess, chemistry, strategy, endurance, loyalty, and a lot of luck.

I guess this means that I actually do watch football for the violence but in a whole different way than the media and the various interested parties in the ongoing concussion > dementia > suicide imbroglio imagine. This means we can still have all the more refined violence of the game with a bit less of the dangerous kind, and football will be none the worse for wear.

78 Responses

I’m unconvinced, because I think we’re learning that football most often causes brain damage, not by the monster hits that could be outlawed, but by the accumulation of normal-sized hits, without which football wouldn’t be a contact sport.Report

Yeah, I am not in a position to dig up the article, but I read that they took a bunch of high school offensive lineman and fitted their helmets with sensors to indicate the types and force of hits they were taking just on play-by-play occurences, nothing really outlandish and whiplash-y, just run-of-the-mill blocking plays, and they were amazed by the amount of force, like minor concussion kinds of force these guys endured over the course of a game.

I imagine there are some people who derive much pleasure watching bone-crunching hits and such, but I’m not one of them. I think back to Theisman and Lawrence Taylor, or Steve Young and the Cardinal blitzer who took him out. That shit is scary and horrifying to watch. The fact that other players can continue to play in the very same game after watching those is amazing.Report

The appeal of violent sports, and let’s not kid ourselves about the violence, goes right to the core of our tribal little brains. Stylised warfare has formed the basis for group identity since human groups began.

Linda Schele, of blessed memory, observed the Maya engaged in stylised warfare where few men died. They went to war encumbered in vast costumes and headdresses. They also played a curious courtyard game called pitz or ulama, still played in some places. It seemed to be accompanied by human sacrifice, though we don’t know how the two were related.

There’s no “I” in team, we’re told. That’s nonsense, of course. It’s all about the individual, just not the individual on the ball court or the gridiron. The individual who watches the game, gets up and rants and gibbers as Christopher Hitchens describes him, he’s the I in team. I am sitting here wearing a Green Bay Packers shirt. I got it as a present for Christmas two years ago from my girlfriend. The vicarious thrill we derive from watching these superb athletes, the hubristic little nuggets of wisdom we dispense about how the Pack might do against the Chargers come August — each such person is the I in team.Report

Shortly after the Seau news came out, I cancelled my subscription to DirecTV’s NFL pacakage. Whether or not Seau is ultimately shown to have CTE is beside the point, it’s a move I had been contemplating for a while.

Even taking head injuries out of the equation, there are strong ethical concerns about paying people to trade their long term health for our entertainment, even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves. Adding in a degenerative brain disease just makes my choice clearer.

It’s still hard not to get caught up in football talk with coworkers, friends, and family.Report

I had a post up on this very topic recently. I find this statement interesting: “Even taking head injuries out of the equation, there are strong ethical concerns about paying people to trade their long term health for our entertainment, even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves.” Will you likewise refuse to watch women’s gymnastics at the Olympics this summer? Will you abscond from eating king crab legs, which are fished under treacherous conditions?

These aren’t “gotcha” questions, mind you. I’m attempting to suss out where that ethical line ought to be and what our role and responsibility as consumers are.Report

The thing is, the assumption is that gymnasts are not suffering permanent debilitating injury as a result of their performance. And as for king crab, for most diners you could replace it with imitation “krab” stuffed into a painted ceramic shell and they wouldn’t know the difference–and, again, the risk is generally not the intent. (Sure, for some people there’s a conspicuous-consumption thing; but then, there are some people who do watch football for the hits and watch NASCAR for the wrecks.)Report

“The thing is, the assumption is that gymnasts are not suffering permanent debilitating injury as a result of their performance.” This same assumption was made about football for a very long time. And there are clear quality of life and health sacrifices that gymnasts (females in particular… I don’t know if the same holds true for male) make to pursue excellence in their sport and entertain us. Maybe not on the level of football, but they’re there.

As for king crab, I’m personally not the biggest fan of it. I do wonder if the fascination with it stems from the exclusivity of it, which is directly borne out of the danger and difficulty in catching them.

Mind you, I’m not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with where balthan, among others, are attempting to draw a line when it comes to the ethics of watching football. But I do get bothered when people reserve all their sanctimony for sports, which far too many media members make their hay doing.Report

Pro Football was pretty much the one sport I followed. I don’t usually watch the Olympics when it’s on.

Any athletic endeavor obviously carries risk. I haven’t seen any information on the long-term health of female gymnasts, so I don’t know how “dangerous” it is, but I’ve wondered (especially after the brouhaha over the Chinese gymnasts last time) about the potential impact of training and competing internationally at their relatively young age. Adolescent athletics is certainly something I’ll need to think about more as my own daughter gets older.

Likewise, I don’t eat crab (or seafood in general), but have watched The Deadliest Catch in the past. If I were to start watching again (is it even still on), that’s something I’d have to ponder.

And I’m certainly not perfect when making choices. I bought a new smartphone recently and I don’t know if it contains conflict minerals from the Congo. I have electronics that were likely produced at Foxconn. I’d like to be more selective in my choices in the future, or at least more willfully informed of what I may be supporting.Report

Thanks for responding, balthan. Not sure if you are new here or if I just haven’t run across you, but good to have you in the mix regardless.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. All of our discussions have moral and ethical implications. They are harder to ignore when someone on the idiot box is shouting them at us. When the next sports controversy/nontroversy comes up, this will likely pass and, with it, much (but not all) of the ethical issues.Report

even if the players are fully informed (which I don’t necessarily think is the case) and willing to make the trade themselves.

That’s a good point. In one sense, players views on this ought to be the last one’s considered: they want to play football. It reminds me of a survey of Olympic athletes (which may be an urban myth, for all I know): lots of them conceded that if there was a drug or a training technique or whatever that allowed them to win a gold medal but would kill them a year later, they’d do it.Report

Don’t we all make these decisions every day? I’d live longer if I never drank beer. But my quality of life would likely suffer. I’ve always maintained that I’d rather live 70 great years than 80 good years or 90 average years.

To get back to balthan’s point, he sees an ethical issue with seeking entertainment from folks who trade their health for a paycheck. Turning the situation around a bit, is there an ethical issue for a brewer who derives his paycheck from my decision to trade my health for a bit of entertainment?Report

Sports are not part of some deep tribal ancestry thingy. They’re relatively recent (at least team sports, which is what we’re focusing on). [again, insert unpc comment about homosexuality and football]Report

Great piece. As I started it, I was tempted to yell, “OF COURSE YOU WATCH IT FOR THE VIOLENCE! YOU JUST DON’T THINK OF IT THAT WAY. YOU WOULDN’T WATCH THE NFL IF IT WAS TOUCH, WOULD YOU?!?!” Reading the rest of it, I see that you took a very nuanced and interesting perspective on the matter.

Most of us don’t enjoy watching others experience pain. We might enjoy the drama or excitement of a big hit, but we pretty much usually want both guys to get up and dust themselves off afterwards. But humans, I think, enjoy conflict. A story isn’t a story without some type of conflict. Physical conflict seems to tap into a more primal sense, as it was the primary means of resolution amongst our ancestors but is increasingly rejected for the same purposes nowadays. So we seek “appropriate” outlets to indulge in physical conflict, as both participants and as spectators. Football is a perfect avenue, especially since it is a bit more sanitized than sports like MMA and boxing, which allows us to pretend we’re not watching for the violence.

If there were the same level of athletic talent on display and the huge media machine behind it that the modern NFL has and 60,000 screaming fans and 50 years of tradition behind it, I’d watch professional flag football in a heartbeat.Report

Ever try following a sport nobody cares about? It’s not nearly as much fun. I think Arena Football is actually superior to the regular game, but it’s not as fun when others aren’t paying attention.Report

Oh, sure. That is why millions (billions?) of folks watch the Super Bowl but not a single regular season game. I wasn’t criticizing JVH, just pointing out what I thought was obvious but going unsaid. I’d argue it is human nature to want to be part of something bigger. Sports offers an amazing and easily accessed avenue for that.Report

Yeah, sure. The sense of community and history is important. But not, I think, as important as the horse race that surrounds the whole thing. I get a lot more enjoyment out of debating power rankings, comparing historical teams, figuring out what to do with my fantasy team, and making predictions on how the season will go than I get out of watching the actual games, though those are fun, too. And none of that is possible if no one else is really passionately engaged. Sporting events are one type of good whose consumption actually produces positive externalities for the other people who use it. Like the internet.Report

The whole thing sounds like that old “traffic lights cause traffic accidents” thing; that is, allowing people to take more risks results in more failures.

Maybe the solution to the problem of repetitive brain injury is to eliminate helmets. The idea being that the helmets don’t protect you well enough against repeated impacts, but they feel protective and encourage risky behavior.

Or, maybe, have the helmets include crushable liners that are replaced after every play.Report

That’s not a trivial point. When I was playing football back in the day, we were specifically taught to use our helmets as a third arm to either ring someone’s bell, force a fumble, or reinforce a solid wrap-up. You seldom see the head used in this fashion in other similar contact sports like rugby or ice hockey.Report

There are games very similar to football and just as violent that are played without any protection except a gum guard and a cup. Both versions of Rugby and Aussie rules football, for example. Rugby players don’t hit so hard as foot players and they don’t get brain damage. On the other hand they do get all kinds of horrible musculo-skeletal injuries …Report

Mike Golic, a former NFL player who makes up half of the radio duo “Mike and Mike in the Morning” made an interesting point today, namely that a very tiny percentage of children who take up football make it to the NFL and sustain any sort of career. Right now, research points to NFL-ers struggling with long-term health issues as a result of their playing careers. There doesn’t seem to be any research on players who peak at college, high school, or younger. I have no doubt that kids suffer concussions at all levels, but it is very possible that there are little to no long term impacts for playing full-contact football as a youth but ceasing at 14 or 18 or 22. Mike Greenberg (the other Mike) made the always silly argument that if just one kid suffers from football, it is a MASSIVE problem. That made me want to shout, since neither guy is usually prone to such hyperbole.

But it is worth considering. Football may far outpace baseball when it comes to concussions among children. But if the incidence rate of concussions among sub-18 football players is 10% and only 10%* of those who suffer concussions endure any sort of long-term ill effects, we are looking at a mere 1% of sub-18 players. That is tiny! Kids engage in a number of activities with equal or greater likelihood of long-term harm without anyone testifying in front of Congress about it.

The assumption that many folks make when insisting they will never let their child play football is that they will be the next Junior Seau. That is like saying you’d never let your child enter politics because he might end up the next JFK. The odds are your kid hangs up his helmet long before his voice cracks.Report

I agree with everything in here, except for this: “Mike Greenberg (the other Mike) made the always silly argument that if just one kid suffers from football, it is a MASSIVE problem. That made me want to shout, since neither guy is usually prone to such hyperbole.”

Mike Greenberg is absurdly prone to such hyperbole. Golic much less so.Report

I suppose I’m viewing him in the context of other sports personalities, especially those with ESPN. I tend to see the two Mikes as two of the more reasoned folks on their various networks. Which isn’t saying much, given the current state of broadcasting.Report

Skip Bayless should be shot. Once, in a conversation about a divide along racial lines of players’ perceptions of Michael Vick, he felt the need to bring up Lil’ John because something-something crazy black people.

I went to a taping of the Stephen A. Smith show once, back when he had his own television show. It was amazing to see how he was between takes, when he bantered off-the-cuff with the audience, compared to how he was when the cameras were rolling. Smart, succinct, reasoned, nuance, no shouting… everything you’d WANT to see. But folks need a shtick. You don’t get ahead in the game being smart, succinct, reasoned, and nuanced. You get ahead by shouting in increasingly high octaves and bugging your eyes out.

Along these same lines, Chris Webber’s game analysis has been amazing during this year’s playoffs. However, he is also a fairly mellow and understated guy, with most of his charisma being subtle. Which means he’ll be canned in the off-season so they can bring back Bill Walton to whine about the Grateful Dead or something.

Jim Rome is a somewhat guilty pleasure of mine. It seems like a weird thing to say, I know, but his show has a genuine moral center. Most sports talk-show hosts rip people because they’re playing badly, but when Rome really rips into someone, it’s because they’re behaving inexcusably. e.g. when Odalis Perez stopped giving away Dodgers tickets to underprivileged kids because he didn’t feel he got enough recognition for it.Report

I had a coach that instilled a value in my long ago. Basically, he had no problem with physical errors. There were times you were going to swing and miss or drop the ball or stumble around the base paths. These things happen. He’d never get mad at us for these. The problems arose when we committed mental errors. Not knowing the number of outs and failing to properly advance on a two out liner was a huge no-no. Etc. REAL problems arose when mental errors led to physical errors. When one of our pitchers didn’t follow the prescribed warm-up protocol and got bombed, the coach lit into him like I never saw. And he was dead right to. He didn’t mind the guys velocity or location being off. But he sure as hell minded that they were off because they kid was goofing off pre-game.

We didn’t really have many “moral” errors, but those would seem to be on another level entirely.

This, in part, has informed the approach I’ve taken thus far with the sports posts on MD (PLUG!). X’s and O’s are fun to talk about, but I tend to be more interested in the bigger meaning of sports. I might have to check Rome out. Is there a button on the remote that eliminates his smugness?Report

It may be that only a small fraction of those who sustain concussions go on to long-term problems. I think the data are still too limited and preliminary to know with any confidence. But even the short-term negative consequences can take an inordinately high toll on quality of life, academic performance, etc. And there’s just no way that I will allow my own child to be exposed to any significant risk of long-term neurological or cognitive disability for the sake of playing a game.Report

I’m with you about the violence:enjoyment thing. I watch football for the same reasons you do – the elegance, the chess match, athleticism, teamwork, etc all performed at a really high rate of speed and with a lot of strength and power – but I think that enjoyment would go down if we overly restricted the types of hits players could make (the normal hard hit for example). But I’m also with Schilling in that the NFL’s concussion problem isn’t the result of one or two head shots, but repeated blows taken over the course of a career. I don’t know what they can do about that other than find better headgear.

Hockey also has the same problems. Concussions are becoming more of a factor in player health and safety, and a bigger concern for the League. In that case, tho, if the NHL made eliminated fighting made shoulder to helmet hits majors (or worse), I think the game would actually improve. Because like you and football, I like hockey despite it’s violence: I’d love to see a cleaner, less violent game which let the skill set of the players shine a bit brighter.Report

Actually, now that I think about it, the shoulder/elbow to head hit is banned in some sense of that word. The league has gone so far as to review plays after the fact and hand out suspensions, etc.Report

College hockey, Olympic hockey, and European hockey all tend to be a lot less physical. I’m not sure about the last two, but I know the first bans fighting. The overly physical, goonish hockey is uniquely American (even the Canadians fret about it at times), with the assumption being that it is the only way for Americans to keep up with their faster, quicker, and more skilled foreign counterparts. Hockey is the sport I know the least about, so I’ll defer to others, but having watched some other leagues and having gone to a hockey powerhouse for college, it is certainly possibly to maintain all the excitement of the game while reducing a lot (but not all) of the violence and physicality.Report

Yeah, I agree. Euro hockey, for example, is much more like Euro soccer (phootball!): an emphasis on puck possession, skating and strategic breakdowns of the opponents defense. I think you might be right that they ban fighting over there, but since the game itself is so different, fighting never emerges as a part of the game the way it does in the NHL. As a hockey fan, I’d love for us to eliminate fighting from the game entirely. Then the goons would be replaced by skill players, which is a win-win from my pov.Report

I’d argue that college hockey is more “physical” in that there is little tolerance for goonish behavior and fewer stand-out stars that the only way to win is with positioning, solid body checks, etc. In the NHL, you’ll see an enforcer just plaster someone and take a two-minute roughing penalty, time and time again, because the game isn’t based on fundamentals: it’s based on star-power.Report

I do agree that hockey seems like a better sport, in terms of long-term player health, than football. Unfortunately it takes a lot more equipment and training to play hockey than it does to play football, so it’s less likely that people will have personal experience of the sport; and that concept of personal experience is a large part of what makes football popular. Hockey needs sticks and (usually) skates and (sometimes) a specialized playing surface; football just needs a largish patch of ground and a ball. The ground doesn’t even have to be prepared all that well, unlike basketball which needs a hard surface or soccer which needs a good field for the ball to roll.Report

It’s worth pointing out that a strong majority of hits don’t actually happen during the games we’re watching. They happen during practice. The real question is not “Would we still enjoy it if we further restricted how tackling occurs in games” but rather “Would we still enjoy it if players were made worse tacklers by heavily restricting their ability to practice tackling?”Report

I’d venture to guess that there are safe ways to teach and practice tackling, such that there wouldn’t be a massive decline in the quality of the game. These tactics tend to be eschewed, in large part because coaches get their rocks off by watching folks below them in the power pecking order destroy each other in the name of gaining coach’s affirmation.Report

As it stands now, any decline would be unacceptable if the other coaches aren’t experiencing it. My alma mater had pad and hit-free practices (except once a week) one season because we had an unusual amount of small speedsters and injury-prone players without a lot of depth (due in part to the injury-proneness). I don’t know that I would call what happened a “massive decline,” but it was notable against the teams we were playing who were beating one another up in practice. It only lasted one season and the defensive coordinator was a scapegoat (he didn’t institute the policy, and he laterally moved to be the DC of an equivalent program).Report

I completely agree. There actually have been some moves in this direction among the less competitive and more academic leagues. I think the Ivy League limits themselves to 2 full-pad practices a week. And since they play a relatively insular schedule and don’t perform in broader competition (they don’t do playoffs), they can afford to as a unit. I think it would be a positive thing for HS and the NCAA to do it as a unit, as well, and if push came to shove they absolutely would.

(I will note that there are people who would disagree with us, and who believe that it would be extremely detrimental.)Report

Gregg Easterbrook always talks about the ass backwards nature of change in football. If the NFL adapted certain safety procedures, you’d see almost immediate and universal adoption of them. Helmets, mouth guards, practice conditions… Goodell could improve these across the board, for NFLers AND kids alike, with a few well-thought-out changes. But the NFL has had their head in the sand, leading to a slow trickle up that leads to changes in dribs and drabs and allows the problem to persist.Report

I’d say a primary reason is that LL has a centralized system that I don’t believe most other sports have. A quick Google search shows several governing agencies for basketball, football, and soccer. LL is really the only game in town for baseball.

Additionally, I think there is a more evident impact of face guards. The difference between a baseball helmet with and without a face guard is obvious. One allows the possibility of getting hit in the face with the ball and one doesn’t. The difference between two football helmets that otherwise look identical but have different types of padding or shock absorption or whatever is harder to see and, thus, likely a harder sell.Report

Hurm. Not where I grew up, actually. We had a local feel-good league (everybody plays) and a more competitive-minded national organization (PONY League) that wasn’t LL. The LL existed, though that was the league the rich kids over in that other town played. We called all of these things “little league” (the same way we call Coca-Cola and Pepsi “coke”).

Is that still the case? We had three leagues… two of which I know for a fact were LL and the third one eventually dissolved or shrunk to near nothingness. The third initially grew out of the Orthodox Jewish population’s need to not play on Saturday, but as the primary town league became more Orthodox, they simply adopted that as the rule to accommodate. This was back in the 90’s.Report

When did that happen? My son played LL until about 4 years ago. There were other safety-related changed (pitch counts, breakaway bases), but no face masks. My daughter’s softball league did face masks, but they also did silly things like having two first bases (one for the fielder, one for the runner) to avoid collisions there.Report

Baseball is a much less violent sport than football, of course. There are only a few situations where contact is tolerated:

* Baserunners taking out an infielder to prevent a double play * “Purpose” pitches * Collisions at the plate

It’s very rare for the first to cause any injuries. The play is much more about the threat of contact than actual contact. In the second, because the risk of serious injury is so high, even the pantomime of drilling a hitter (e.g. throwing behind him) is enough to cause brawls and ejections. And a pitcher who intentionally hits someone anywhere near the head would face at least a long suspension, if not expulsion from the game.

The last one is the strangest. It can cause very serious injuries, like Buster Posey losing most of last year to being hurt in a completely clean collision. (There wasn’t a second’s serious thought about punishing or even admonishing the guy who ran into him.) Nor did the depth of the injury (which wasn’t, thank God, career-ending, but could have been) result in a serious reconsideration of the play. It’s part of baseball, in fact, one of the most exciting plays in baseball. If the catcher can’t set himself properly, he needs to get out of the way and try for a sweep tag.

The strange part is, there’s nothing in the rules that says the catcher can block the plate in the first place. The classic bang-bang play where the catcher blocks the runner off the plate, receives the ball, and turns to tag the runner (who hasn’t been able to get through or around the catcher to touch home plea) is, by the rule book, interference, and the runner should be awarded the run. The rules are de facto ignored to allow this bit of violence.Report

I’ve also read here and there over the years that football is a gigantic outlet for frustrated homoerotic fantasies.

Your basic point is well-taken. If it’s only about the violence then there are plenty of better entertainment choices than football. Horse racing, for instance. Or dramatic television. I mean, if the Martians are monitoring our prime time drama broadcasts they must be convinced that the human race is evenly divided between police, forensics experts, and violent sex criminals. Probably deters them from invading our planet.Report

One watches football for the skill used to win within the margins of the field and within the boundaries of the rules; football is celebrated because teams win. Anyone celebrating the violence does not understand the skill needed to play the game well.Report

I love watching football game, and also other games. Now a days we don’t see much violence in game, it’s a great news for sports lover. Now we see some rivalry, I think people enjoy this. But this is not violence.Report

Religious Institutions. Religious institutions may resume services subject to the following conditions, which apply to churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, interfaith centers, and any other space, including rented space, where religious or faith gatherings are held: 1. Indoor religious gatherings are limited to no more than ten people. 2. Outdoor religious gatherings of up to 250 people are allowed. Outdoor services may be held on any outdoor space the religious institution owns, rents, or reserves for use. 3. All attendees at either indoor or outdoor services must maintain appropriate social distancing of six feet and wear face masks or facial coverings at all times. 4. There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service. 5. Collection plates or receptacles may not be passed to or between attendees. 6. There should be no hand shaking or other physical contact between congregants before, during, or after religious services. Attendees shall not congregate with other attendees on the property where religious services are being held before or after services. Family members or those who live in the same household or who attend a service together in the same vehicle may be closer than six feet apart but shall remain at least six feet apart from any other persons or family groups. 7. Singing is permitted, but not recommended. If singing takes place, only the choir or religious leaders may sing. Any person singing without a mask or facial covering must maintain a 12-foot distance from other persons, including religious leaders, other singers, or the congregation. 8. Outdoor or drive-in services may be conducted with attendees remaining in their vehicles. If utilizing parking lots for either holding for religious services or for parking for services held elsewhere on the premises, religious institutions shall ensure there is adequate parking available. 9. All high touch areas, (including benches, chairs, etc.) must be cleaned and decontaminated after every service. 10. Religious institutions are encouraged to follow the guidelines issued by Governor Hogan.

“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the order says in a section delineating norms and restrictions on religious services.

The consumption of the consecrated species at Mass, at least by the celebrant, is an integral part of the Eucharistic rite. Rules prohibiting even the celebrating priest from receiving the Eucharist would ban the licit celebration of Mass by any priest.

CNA asked the Howard County public affairs office to comment on how the rule aligns with First Amendment religious freedom and free exercise rights.

Howard County spokesman Scott Peterson told CNA in a statement that "Howard County has not fully implemented Phase 1 of Reopening. We continue to do an incremental rollout based on health and safety guidelines, analysis of data and metrics specific to Howard County and in consultation with our local Health Department."

"With this said," Peterson added, "we continue to get stakeholder feedback in order to fully reopen to Phase 1."

The executive order also limits attendance at indoor worship spaces to 10 people or fewer, limits outdoor services to 250 socially-distanced people wearing masks, forbids the passing of collection plates, and bans handshakes and physical contact between worshippers.

In contrast to the 10-person limit for churches, establishments listed in the order that do not host religious services are permitted to operate at 50% capacity.

In the early days of the Coronavirus epidemic, there were hopes that the disease could be treated with a compound called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). HCQ is a long-established inexpensive medicine that is widely used to treat malaria. It also has uses for treating rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. There had been some indications that HCQ could treat SARS virus infections by attacking the spike proteins that coronaviruses use to latch onto cells and inject their genetic material. Initial small-scale studies of the drug on COVID-19 patients indicated some positive effect (in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin). President Trump, in March, promoted HCQ as a game-changer and is apparently taking it as a prophylaxis after potentially being exposed by White House staff.

Initial claims of the efficacy of this therapy were a perfect illustration of why we base decisions on scientific studies and not anecdotes. By late March, Twitter was filled with stories of "my cousin's mother's former roommate was on death's door and took this therapy and miraculously recovered". But such stories, even assuming they are true, mean nothing. With COVID-19, we know that seriously ill people reach an inflection point where they either recover or die. If they died while taking the HCQ regimen, we don't hear from them because...they died. And if they recover without taking it, we don't hear from them because...they didn't take it. Our simian brains have evolved to think that correlation is causation. But it isn't. If I sacrificed a goat in every COVID-19 patient's room, some of them would recover just by chance. That doesn't mean we should start a massive holocaust of caprines.

However, even putting aside anecdotes, there were good reasons to believe the HCQ regimen might work. And given the seriousness of this disease and the desperation of those trying to save lives, it's understandable that doctors began using it for critically ill patients and scientists began researching its efficacy.

Why Trump became fixated on it is equally understandable. Trump has been looking for a quick fix to this crisis since Day One. Denial failed. Closing off (some) travel to China failed. A vaccine is months if not years away. So HCQ offered him what he wanted -- a way to fix this problem without the hard work, tough choices and sacrifice of stay-at-home orders, masks, isolation and quarantine. So eager were they to adopt the quick fix, the Administration made plans to distribute millions of doses of this unproven drug in lieu of taking more concrete steps to address the crisis.[efn_note]Although the claim that Trump stands to profit off HCQ sales does not appear to hold much water.[/efn_note]

This is also why certain fringe corners of the internet became fixated on it. There has arisen a subset of the COVID Truthers that I'm calling HCQ Truthers: people who believe that HCQ isn't just something that may save some lives but is, in fact, a miracle cure that it's only being held back so that...well, take your pick. So that Democrats can wreck the economy. So that Bill Gates can inject us with tracking devices. So that we can clear off the Social Security rolls. And this isn't just a US phenomenon nor is it all about Trump. Overseas friends tell me that COVID trutherism in general and HCQ trutherism in particular have arisen all over the Western World.

It's no accident that the HCQ Truthers seem to share a great deal of headspace with the anti-Vaxxers. It fills the same needs

In both cases, the idea was started by flawed studies. The initial studies out of China and France that indicated HCQ worked were heavily criticized for methodological errors (although note that neither claimed it was a miracle cure). Since then, larger studies have shown no effect.

HCQ trutherism offers an explanation for tragedy beyond the random cruelty of nature. Just as anti-vaxxers don't want to believe that sometimes autism just happens, HCQ Truthers don't want to believe that sometimes nature just releases awful epidemics on us. It's more comforting, in some ways, to think that bad happenings are all part of a plan by shadowy forces.

There is, however, another crazy side that doesn't get as much attention because their crazy is a bit more subtle. These are the people who have decided that, since Trump is touting the HCQ treatment, it must not work. It can not work. It can not be allowed to work. There is an undisguised glee when studies show that HCQ does not work and a willingness to blame HCQ shortages on Trump and only Trump.[efn_note]Not to mention the odd fish tank cleaner poisoning that has nothing to do with him.[/efn_note]

In between the two camps are everyone else: scientists, doctors and ordinary folk who just want to know whether this thing works or not, politics and conspiracy theories be damned. Well, last week, we got a big indication that it does not. A massive study out of the Lancet concluded that the HCQ regimen has no measurable positive effect. In fact, death rates were higher for those who took the regimen, likely due to heart arrhythmias induced by the drug.

So is the debate over? Can we move on from HCQ? Not quite.

First of all, the study is a retrospective study, looking backward at nearly 100,000 cases over the last four months. That's a massive sample that allows one to correct for potential confounding factors. But it's not a double-blind trial, so there may be certain biases that can not be avoided. In response to the publication, a group doing a controlled study unblinded some of their data (that is, they let an independent group look up who was getting the actual HCQ and who was getting a placebo). It did not show enough of a safety concern to warrant ending the study.

It's also worth noting that because this is an unproven therapy, it is usually being used on only the sickest patients (the odd President of the United States aside). It's possible earlier use of the drug, when the body is not already at war with itself, could help.

With those caveats in mind, however, this study at least makes it clear that HCQ is not the miracle cure some fringe corners of the internet are pretending it is. And it should make doctors hesitant in giving to people who already have heart issues.

As you can imagine, this has only fed the twin camps of derangement. The truther arguments tend to fall into the usual holes that truther theories do:

"How can this be a four-month study when we only learned about COVID in January!" The HCQ protocol started being used almost immediately because of previous research on coronaviruses.

"How come all of the sudden this safe medicine that people use all the time is dangerous?!" The side effects of HCQ have been well known for years and have always required consideration and management. They may be showing up more strongly here because it is being given to patients whose bodies are already under extreme stress. Also, azithromycin may amplify some of those side effects.

"They just hate Trump." Not everything is about Donald Trump. If it turned out that kissing Donald Trump's giant orange backside cured COVID, scientists would be the first ones telling people to line up and use chapstick.

The other camp's response has ranged from undisguised glee -- that is, joy at the idea that we won't be saving lives cheaply -- to bizarre claims that Trump should be charged with crimes for touting this unproven therapy.

(A perfect illustration of the dementia: former FDA Head Scott Gottlieb -- who has been a Godsend for objective analysis during the pandemic -- tweeted out the results of the RECOVERY unblinding yesterday morning and noted that it showed no increased safety risk. He was immediately dogpiled by one side insisting he was trying to conceal the miracle cure of HCQ and the other insisting he is a Trumpist doing the Orange Man's dirty work.)

In the end, the lunatics do not matter. Whether HCQ works or not, whether it is used or not, will be mostly determined by doctors and will mostly be based on the evidence we have in front of us. If HCQ fails -- and it's not looking good -- my only response will be massive disappointment. Had HCQ worked, it would have been a gift from the heavens. It is a well-known, well-studied drug that can be manufactured cheaply in bulk. Had it worked, we could have saved thousands of lives, prevented hundreds of thousands of long-term injuries and saved trillions of dollars. That it doesn't appear to work -- certainly not miraculously -- is not entirely unexpected but is also a tragedy.

{C1} The Christian Science Monitor looks at 1918 and how sports handled that pandemic, and the role it played in giving rise to college football.

"That's really what started the big boom of college football in the 1920s," said Jeremy Swick, historian at the College Football Hall of Fame. "People were ready. They were back from war. They wanted to play football again. There weren't as many restrictions about going out. You could enroll back in school pretty easily. You see a great level of talent come back into the atmosphere. There's new money. It started to get to the roar of the Roaring '20s and that's when you see the stadiums arm race. Who can build the biggest and baddest stadium?"

{C2} During times of rapid change, social science is supposed to be able to help lead the way or at least decipher what is going on. Or maybe not...

But while Willer, Van Bavel, and their colleagues were putting together their paper, another team of researchers put together their own, entirely opposite, call to arms: a plea, in the face of an avalanche of behavioral science research on COVID-19, for psychology researchers to have some humility. This paper—currently published online in draft format and seeding avid debates on social media—argues that much of psychological research is nowhere near the point of being ready to help in a crisis. Instead, it sketches out an “evidence readiness” framework to help people determine when the field will be.

{C3} There is a related story about AI - which is predisposed towards tracking slow change over time - is having trouble keeping up.

{C4} The Covid-19 does not bode well for higher education is not news. They may have a lot of difficulty opening up (and maybe shouldn't). An added wrinkle is kids taking a gap year, which is potentially a problem because those most able to pay may be least likely to attend.

{C5} People who can see the faults with abstinence only education fail to see how that logic (We shouldn't give guidance to people doing things we would rather they not do in the first place). Emily Oster argues that the extreme message of public health advocates to Just Stay Home is counterproductive.

When people are advised that one very difficult behavior is safe, and (implicitly or not) that everything else is risky, they may crack under the pressure, or throw up their hands. That is, if people think all activities (other than staying home) are equally risky, they figure they might as well do those that are more fun. If taking a walk at a six-foot distance from a friend puts me at very high risk, why not just have that friend and a bunch of others over for a barbecue? It’s more fun. This is an exaggeration, of course, but different activities carry very different risks, and conscientious civic leaders should actively help people choose among them.

{C6} A look at what canceling the football season will do to the little guys - non-power schools. Ironically, they may sustain less damage due to fewer financial obligations relying on the money that won't be coming in. Be that as it may, Fordham has disestablished its baseball program.

{C7} Bans on evictions and rental spikes could have the main effect of simply pushing out small investors, rather than protecting renters. In a more good-faith economy this would be less of an issue because landlords would work with tenants. Which some are, though I don't have too much faith about it being widespread.

{C8} Three cheers for Nick Saban. Football coaches are cultural leaders of a sort. One is about to become a senator in Alabama, even. What they do matters.

The American college experience for better or for worse revolves around the residency factor. We have turned college into a relatively safe place for young adults to the test the limits of freedom without suffering too many consequences. Better to miss a day of classes because you drank too much than to miss a day of an apprenticeship or job and get fired. College was cut short this semester because of COVID and colleges are freaking out about whether they can open up dorms in the fall. The dorms are big money makers and it is hard to justify huge tuition bucks for zoom lectures even for elite universities. Maybe especially for them. California State University announced that Fall 2020 is going to be largely online. My undergrad alma mater sent out an e-mail blast announcing their plan to reopen in the fall with "mostly" in person classes. The President admitted that the plan was a work in progress but it strikes me as a combination of common sense and extreme wishful thinking. The plan may include:

1. Staggered drop-off days to limit density as we return.

This sounds reasonable but only in a temporary way because eventually everyone will be back on campus, living in dorm rooms together, needing to use communal bathrooms and showers.

2. Students would be tested for COVID-19 on campus at least twice in the first 14 days.

There is nothing wrong with this as long as the testing is available. Our capacity for testing so far in this country has not been great.

3. Anyone experiencing symptoms would be tested immediately. Students who test positive would be cared for in a separate dormitory area where food would be brought to the room and where the student could still access classes remotely.

Nothing wrong here. Outbreaks of certain diseases are not unknown in the college setting. During my senior year, there was an outbreak of a rather nasty strain of gastroenteritis. Other universities have experienced meningitis outbreaks.

4. All students would take their temperature and report symptoms daily.

This one is also reasonable but is going to involve spying on students and coming up with a punishment mechanism. How will they make sure students are not lying?

5. We would also require that socializing be kept to a minimum in the beginning, with proper PPE (masks) and social distancing. As time went on, we would seek to open up more, and students could socialize and eat together in small groups.

I have no idea how they tend for this to happen and it sets of all my lawyer bells for carefully crafted language that attempts to answer a concern or question but also admits "we got nothing." Maybe today's students are more somber and sincere but you are going to have around 500 eighteen year olds who are away from their parents for the first time and another 1500 nineteen to twenty-one year olds who had their semester rudely interrupted and might now be reunited with boyfriends and girlfriends. Are they going to assign eating times for the dining hall and put up solo eating cubicles that get wiped down and disinfected after each use? Assign times to use laundry facilities in each dorm? Cancel the clubs? Cancel performances by the theatre, dance, and music departments?

I am sympathetic to my alma I love it but and realize that a lot of colleges and universities would take a real hit financially without residency. This includes universities with reasonable to very large endowments. Only the ones with hedge fund size endowments would not suffer but the last part of the plain sounds not fully thought out yet even if my college's current President admitted: "Life on campus will not look the same as it did pre-pandemic" The only way i see number 5 working is if requiring is read as "requiring."

Seems that the theory that Covid-19 can be spread by asymptomatic people has very shaky evidence in support of it. Turns out the case this assumption was made from was based on a single woman who infected 4 others. Researchers talked to the 4 patients, and they all said the patient 0 did not appear ill, but they could not speak to patient 0 at the time.

So they finally got to talk to her, and she said she was feeling ill, but powered through with the aid of modern pharmaceuticals.

Ten Second News

Today we couldn’t be happier to announce that Vox Media and New York Media are merging to create the leading independent modern media company. Our combined business will be called Vox Media and will serve hundreds of millions of audience members wherever they prefer to enjoy our work.

In a nation in turmoil, it's nice to have even a small bit of good news:

Representative Steve King of Iowa, the nine-term Republican with a history of racist comments who only recently became a party pariah, lost his bid for renomination early Wednesday, one of the biggest defeats of the 2020 primary season in any state.

In a five-way primary, Mr. King was defeated by Randy Feenstra, a state senator, who had the backing of mainstream state and national Republicans who found Mr. King an embarrassment and, crucially, a threat to a safe Republican seat if he were on the ballot in November.

The defeat was most likely the final political blow to one of the nation’s most divisive elected officials, whose insults of undocumented immigrants foretold the messaging of President Trump, and whose flirtations with extremism led him far from rural Iowa, to meetings with anti-Muslim crusaders in Europe and an endorsement of a Toronto mayoral candidate with neo-Nazi ties.

King, you may remember, was stripped of his committee assignments last year when he defended white supremacism. Two years ago, he almost lost his Congressional seat in the general. That is, a seat that Republicans have held since 1986, usually win by double digits and a district Trump carried by a whopping 27 points almost came within a point or two of voting in a Democrat. That's how repulsive King had gotten.

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Enjoy retirement, Congressman. Oops. Sorry. In January, it will be former Congressman.

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From the Daily Mail: Deadliest city in America plans to disband its entire police force and fire 270 cops to deal with budget crunch

The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch.

...

The police union says the force, which will not be unionized, is simply a union-busting move that is meant to get out of contracts with current employees. Any city officers that are hired to the county force will lose the benefits they had on the unionized force.

Oak Park police say they are investigating “suspicious circumstances” after two attorneys — including one who served as a hearing officer in several high-profile Chicago police misconduct cases — were found dead in their home in the western suburb Monday night.

Officers were called about 7:30 p.m. for a well-being check inside a home in the 500 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, near Chicago Avenue, and found the couple dead inside, Oak Park spokesman David Powers said in an emailed statement. Authorities later identified them as Thomas E. Johnson, 69, and Leslie Ann Jones, 67, husband and wife attorneys who worked in Chicago.

The preliminary report from an independent autopsy ordered by George Floyd's family says the 46 year old man's death was "caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to a lack of blood flow to the brain".

The independent examiners found that weight on the back, handcuffs and positioning were contributory factors because they impaired the ability of Floyd's diaphragm to function, according to the report.

Dr. Michael Baden and the University of Michigan Medical School's director of autopsy and forensic services, Dr. Allecia Wilson, handled the examination, according to family attorney Ben Crump.

Baden, who was New York's medical examiner in 1978 and 1979, had previously performed independent autopsies on Eric Garner, who was killed by a police officer in Staten Island, New York, in 2014 and Michael Brown, who was shot by officers in Ferguson, Missouri, that same year.

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Oddly, the video was dropped by an attorney friend the men, because he thought it would exonerate them. He assumed when people saw Aubrey turn and try to defend himself, everyone would see what they did: a dangerous animal needing to be put down.